Iffy:

I can't help but laugh as I step off the elevator into the subdued lighting of Big Huge Games' offices. The location is a small office park in a suburb of Baltimore and I'm here to meet with Tim Train. The occasion is the revelation of Rise of Nations: Rise of Legends' third race and the opportunity to get my hands dirty with the single-player campaign and multiplayer portions of the game. The reason for my chuckling, though, is the name of that suburb: Timonium. Timonium is also the name of the resource players will mine on the world of Aio in Big Huge Games' Rise of Nations -- Rise of Legends.

Tim Train also laughs when he greets me. "You noticed that, huh?" he says when I mention the name of the town. "The name's actually based on a monk named Timon who supposedly founded this town, but when you look at it, it really does sound like the kind of made-up material that a player would mine in a real-time strategy game." Ironically, the origin of the name Timonium actually serves as an excellent launch point for a discussion of the Rise of Legends' third race. "It's interesting sometimes, to think about where an idea comes from and examine the process of refining it." Tim says as our talk begins, "Because the Cuotl were far from our only idea when we were coming up with an idea for the third race."

False Gods

Rise of Nation: Rise of Legends, is, for those unfamiliar with the game, the follow-up to Big Huge Games' critically acclaimed and very successful RTS Rise of Nations. Unlike the previous game, however, Rise of Legends is neither a true sequel, nor a historical epic. Instead, the game takes place on the world of Aio, where the Alin, a race of desert warriors, have built up an incredible civilization by harnessing the powers of fire, sand, and glass magic and using the abilities of a variety of summoned djinn. Change is coming to Aio, however. A new power is rising in the Vinci -- a technological civilization based on the scientific concepts of Leonardo Da Vinci. A clash between magic and technology seems inevitable. As the player discovers, however, the Vinci and the Alin have an enemy far greater than each other. It's one that, if left unchecked, will eliminate both of their civilizations.

"We put a lot of thought into who the third race was going to be." Train said. "We had these two forces fighting each other, magic and technology, and they both seemed so elemental and so fascinating that we knew that the third race would have to something pretty special to hold its own against them."

According to Train, one of the keys to Big Huge Games' success is that everyone's invited to contribute to the game design process, and it's particularly important that both artists and programmers buy into and get enthused about the concept they're working with. "We had two ideas that actually got a lot of traction before they ended up getting cut." Train said, "One was a race of dinosaur riders, the other was a race that would build mobile cities on the backs of giant animals." According to Train, both ideas were shot down after a lot of work trying to put them together. "Our artists worked really hard on the dinosaur riders, but in the end they came to us and said they just couldn't make them visually interesting enough to hold their own against Alin and Vinci units. The artists loved the 'caravan' idea, but when our programmers tried to implement them, they were almost impossible to balance."

Once the idea of the Cuotl came up, though, a lot of stuff just seemed to fall into place. "Brian Reynolds always loved Chariot of The Gods." Train said, referring to the long since discredited work of "non-fiction" by author Erich von Daniken that claims that ancient astronauts visited Earth long ago, taught the ancestors of the Mayans, Incans, and Egyptians science and technology, and basically formed the foundation of all human culture. While never really given credence as a serious work of science, Chariot of the Gods is still a fun read and has long been used as an inspiration for science fiction and fantasy authors -- including the developers of Rise of Legends who used the idea of astronauts masquerading as gods to give shape to the Cuotl.